Hey All,

First time poster here. Been going through a wealth of threads regarding proper gear selection and I'm still having trouble narrowing down, no pun intended, the right down bag for my wife and I.

Our upcoming trip is to Bolivia where we have planned the ascents of Pequeno Alpamayo, Huayna Potosi and Sajama.

In the past we have rented bags as our travel plans extended past the treks and didn't want the extra weight/space to be an issue. But after the last experience with a nearly fatal dose of body odor from the rented equipment we want our own bags!

Our future plans would invlove more Himalayan and Andean trekking, with the possibility of some climbs approaching 7000m, and always in tented camps. No Denali or Vinson in the foreseeable future. Kili/Mt Kenya would be the absolute warmest condtions I think the bag would be used for, although I'm doubtful a winter bag would work unzipped for us in the lowlands.

Any thoughts/recommendations on which WM bag would be our best bet? I'm eyeing the Versalite pretty hard, along with a therm-a-rest neoair xtherm max pad. Is something like the Lynx or Puma overkill for warmth?

Thanks for your help!

I think it depends upon how warm you sleep. I am a very warm sleeper and have used the WM Apache Super Dryloft +15 (circa mid '90s) on multiple winter ascents of Rainier and two Alaska range climbs (Ruth Gorge early May, Hunter early June) as well as in the summer in the Cascades, Tetons, Canadian Rockies, etc. For me the Versalite at +10 would be a good choice for the climbs you mentioned.

ExcitableBoy wrote:I think it depends upon how warm you sleep. I am a very warm sleeper and have used the WM Apache Super Dryloft +15 (circa mid '90s) on multiple winter ascents of Rainier and two Alaska range climbs (Ruth Gorge early May, Hunter early June) as well as in the summer in the Cascades, Tetons, Canadian Rockies, etc. For me the Versalite at +10 would be a good choice for the climbs you mentioned.

Appreciate the response, I don't know on a scale of 1 to 10 what kind of warm sleeper I am, but I'd hazard to guess I'm closer to the high end than the low end.

I took a 20° WM bag (sorry, no idea on name) to Bolivia and did just fine. However, Sajama is supposed to be way colder than what we did.

Agree that it all depends on how warm of a sleeper you are. If you have the chance to borrow a bag to field test it helps a lot. IMO it doesn't have to be a WM bag, just any decent down bag to see how you feel while sleeping at the lower limit of its temp range. Because let's face it, bags in this range do have a lot of flexibility in terms of how you zip the bag and how you layer when sleeping in it. I have a some very similar plans to you and I recently chose the WM Antelope.